When $UPWK debuted back in October of last year, the shares were oversubscribed by a factor of 20x. A colleague of mine noted that "nearly every investor that met with the company on the roadshow put in an order". They are a first mover and the market opportunity is estimated to be around $560 BILLION.

One potential catalyst for the share price which has fallen off the radar since the December swoon, is their partnership with $MSFT. On Dec 7, #Microsoft announced a partnership with UPWK to launch the Microsoft 365 freelance Toolkit. "The toolkit is an integrated workforce collaboration solution that helps enterprises work with freelancers at scale and is powered by Microsoft 365 and Upwork Enterprise". This move was very much inspired by Microsoft's own initiative to embrace a flexible talent model. Microsoft launched an internal pilot program to give employees access to flexible, freelance talent. Within the past year, Microsoft completed over 2100 projects on Upwork. These projects included writing, research, video editing, translation, design and data science. This level of integration is reminiscent of the early partnership between Microsoft and LinkedIn before Microsoft acquired them.

The market opportunity for #Upwork is huge, expanding and mostly untapped. So where are the analysts? This has a great deal to do with how the investment banking model works and a little known sell-side strategy called "momentum ignition". This involves a (possibly coordinated) series of "beat and raise" actions by sell-side analysts intended to trigger a mark-up phase in the stock price following a period of accumulation for their institutional client's books. To accumulate shares, the stock needs to have unrestricted float. Their post-IPO restriction period has not ended yet. Contrary to popular belief, stocks don't necessarily go down when the IPO restriction ends.

UPWK becomes an extremely juicy takeover candidate for a company like MSFT as the latter is positioning itself to dominate the B.I. and workforce productivity markets.

The rate at which companies are shifting towards a flexible workforce is accelerating and we are in the early stages of a systemic shift that will see flexible workforce models becoming the norm.

#Microsoft is smart to reinvest in the cloud. Competition is fierce but $MSFT has an edge.

While true, I think $IBM and $MSFT are two likely beneficiaries. And I think the author is correct that any company, such as $AMZN which has criticized #Trump will likely be excluded from consideration.

While the industry as a whole will likely benefit from this executive order, it is really too early to tell if $IBM, $MSFT or any other specific company will benefit.

I use #Alexa often. It can't answer nearly as many questions as #Siri, but can have "skills" added, app-like programs to do everything from play games to control your smart home. $AMZN $AAPL

I've never used #GoogleAssist and hadn't realized #Google was getting into this space but could see them being formidable. But I've never had #Cortana successfully answer anything I've ever asked it. All it does is direct me to a web search. No idea what #Microsoft is trying to accomplish with that but I would place them dead last. $GOOGL $MSFT

How would you say #Apple's #Siri or #Google's #GoogleAssistant compares with #Microsoft's #Cortana or #Amazon's #Alexa? $AAPL $GOOGL $MSFT $AMZN

Generally I'm bullish on $MSFT, but you've made an convincing case to wait. Thanks for sharing your excellent analysis on #Microsoft.

The valuation is the single reason I have avoided #Microsoft over the last year. I agree that it is the kind of company you buy on a market correction. $MSFT

Most of the dividend decreases/cuts come from companies heavily invested in the energy sector. For this reason, there is skew from one particular sector representing a huge portion of dividend decreases. In addition, I disagree with #Microsoft dividend safety raking on the grounds that a company with a predicted revenue payout ratio of 43%. Also, Microsoft has a AAA credit ranking a significant amount of assets held overseas. $MSFT